The TikTok fyp is vastly better than the Instagram discover tab, which gives you a menu of videos as jumping off point before you get sucked into scrollhole. I agree about autoscroll though. Sometimes I want to watch a video like 10 times, and feel very annoyed when Instagram had the auto scroll feature. I think it's gone now. Instead it just nudges the video up with a little messages that tells me to scroll for more. I always thought that must be a first-time user tutorial, but it never stops, so either it's broken or it's broken.
Click in the article refers to plain old web navigation. There are links on the page, you move the mouse around and click on whichever one you want.
Tap is referring to "Stories" interaction, which is more narrowed and less user choice than click. A story is playing, you tap anywhere on the screen and the next story replaces it and begins playing.
I actually think "tap" and "swipe" are basically the same? They are both just a "give me the next one please" interaction. But the rest do progress from more user-directed to more computer-controlled.
(Click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay)
"Click" and "Tap" are essentially the same thing (on a desktop vs. on a mobile device): the user actively selecting what content to view next. So are "scroll" and "autoplay" (for text/image and video content, respectively). In the former, the user has agency over what to view, and in the latter, the transition is automated.
I'm very skeptical that fully automated UI will ever replace giving the user a small selection of recommended items.